Wishful Thinking

May 07, 2006

The Secrets of Incredible Food

For the past two years, I’ve been trying to figure out what makes food taste incredible as opposed to merely good or great. And now, I think I’ve found the answer.

It’s often said that great cooking is a combination of great ingredients and technique. Unquestionably, the quality of produce and skill of the cook* both have a tremendous influence on the final dish. But incredible food often contains one additional element – nostalgia. Like flipping through an old photo album, food has the power to arouse memories and bring us back to special moments in time.

Incredible food, in my opinion, has at least as much to do with nostalgia, as it does with ingredients and technique. To anyone else, my mom’s meatballs are probably not the best in the world. But they are the best to me, because of the memories I associate with them and because they’re the meatballs that I’m most familiar with. So even if a dish doesn’t use great ingredients and technique, it’s possible for these limitations to be overcome by the nostalgia that a diner brings to the table. Understanding and taking advantage of your guest's food-related memories is cooking’s secret ingredient.

Food can be incredible when it exceeds our past experiences (our expectations) or when it reminds us of a past experience (nostalgia). By itself, exceeding expectations is a function of better ingredients and technique. It will be much harder to exceed the expectations of someone who has dined at many fine restaurants compared to a person with limited experience. Nostalgia, on the other hand, is based on food-related memories from which the diner can draw upon. So whether or not you've eaten at the world’s best restaurants, it’s likely that you have special food memories that mean more to you than solely the food itself.

So suppose you’re cooking for someone who’s dined at many great restaurants. In order to create food that your guest will consider incredible, it’s intuitive to think that you’ll have to cook at a level that rivals the best food she's ever had - not an easy task. But if you’re able to tap into your guest’s memories and make a dish that’s special to her, your food will mean much more, and she might even find it incredible!

Of course, I’m certainly not the first one to suggest this. In addition to the millions of people who have nostalgic cravings for a home-cooked meal, innovative chefs like Heston Blumenthal of The Fat Duck reference traditional dishes on their menu in hopes of transporting diners back to their childhood if only for a few bites. Blumenthal’s Sardine on Toast Sorbet utilizes a flavour pairing that his local patron’s grew up eating. Similarly, Thomas Keller’s Coffee and Doughnuts is a dessert inspired by a classic North American coupling that millions of people can relate to.

The inherent risk in cooking with nostalgia is if your guests don’t get it. For instance, if I were to visit The Fat Duck and eat Sardine on Toast Sorbet, I’d probably just think it was interesting and strange because I’ve never had sardines on toast before, nor do I have any memories associated with the dish. So in order for a dish to appeal a wider audience, it’s important that the food actually tastes good, with or without nostalgia.

Being somewhat of a food geek, I thought I’d take a stab at quantifying nostalgia as it relates to deliciousness. While this isn't really meant to be a formula for plugging in actual numbers, it shows the extent to which nostalgia can influence delicious food. It’s also important to note that you can have negative associations with foods – so no matter how good the ingredients and technique are, you could still dislike a dish because of the unwanted memories you associate with it.

If molecular gastronomy is loosely defined as the science of deliciousness, then perhaps cooking with nostalgia or more generally, cognitive gastronomy can be thought of as the psychology of deliciousness. Within cognitive gastronomy, we could also consider other factors such as how a person’s mood and state of mind affects their enjoyment of food. In the coming weeks, I hope to explore this area further. But in the meantime, take a look at these fascinating articles by Louisa of Movable Feast, and Heston Blumenthal of The Fat Duck.

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Comments

Hi Clement,
Sweet nostalgia and food - an inseparable duo! If I had the chance to choose between a ten course dinner at some highly awarded restaurant and a traditional lunch, prepared like my grandma used to do it, I would take the later. Without hesitation :)

Clement,
I like your theorem (reminds me of college!) and your post was a fascinating read. I agree about the value of nostalgia; why else would we remember so fondly those foods that today might not match our more-developed-tastes?
I read Steve Almond's observation Candyfreak about how candy companies basically attuned people to the tastes of their product - so even though Hershey's is not a very good chocolate, for thousands of Americans that is what chocolate tastes like because it's what they had in childhood.
I'm glad to have moved on past Hershey's, though!

interesting article and I guess you're right about that. One other thing that counts a lot is the environment I think. If you have a mediterranean dinner on a terrasse overlooking the côte d'azur, it will taste much better than if you have the same dinner in northern europe, or for example during wintertime. Or some particular environment can have a certain smell, like the herbs of the garrigue in Southern France, which mixes with the flavor of ýour dish or of your wine. maybe you could put it in your formula ;)
cheers,
alex

Hi Clement! I was thinking about Louisa's article and FD philosophy while reading your hilarious, and possibly spot on theorem--so funny that you linked to it. I was haunted by that exchange between Lousia and Herve This for days--I couldn't believe it!

I've been visiting your site for a while now, and I'll second being glad you're back.

Too right about nostalgia and deliciousness, Clement. When you talk about food being incredible food being about excellent preparation or wonderful memories (or both!) I'm reminded of the best strawberries I ever had. One September, years ago, on a road trip some friends and I made an impromptu stop at a farmers' market just north of San Francisco. We bought 3 pints of strawberries and the aroma alone was like nothing I'd ever experienced. We absolutely gorged ourselves on them in the late morning sunshine. They were sweeter than and more wonderful than any I've had since.
PS: I'm glad you're back, too!

What a great post and great formula. Bravo Clement. I totally agree. Tapping into childhood or nostalgiac flavors and modernizing those flavors is a great way to wow friends. One dish that constantly gets my friends excited is an oxtail lasagne. Oxtail stew is big here and most foodies have grown up eating it. By deboning braised oxtail and making a "gourmet" lasagne with it -- while easy to do -- always rewards me with smiles on faces.

What I find really interesting also is that many of us harbor food nostalgia for foods that have no cultural or historical relevance to us. Case in point: I'm Asian, but French cuisine "grand-mere" really gets me, pulls my heartstrings and makes me imagine myself in some imagined past... which is silly because my ancestors weren't sitting in Alsace munching on onion tart but in Southern China. My wife is the same way and I've discovered so too are many others. I think it's because of the books we've absorbed which make us create this false nostalgia of things like dipping madeleines in tea.

Brilliant theorem! As a cook with Southern heritage who often relies heavily on nostalgia, I'm definitely a proponent of this theory. No matter how complex and gourmet my recipes become, inevitably my favorites are always still things like my mom's pound cake or chicken and dumplings. What a great idea to incorporate those nostalgic flavors into modern, cutting-edge dishes like foam and ice cream!

As a chef I have always considered there to be two types of good food. The first is done technically correct. The second is food cooked from the heart.

Anybody can follow a recipe and make food technically correct. People do this at home all the time.

Food cooked from the heart is where the memories are from. Most of the time Mom's food was from the heart. When I go to someone's house, the food might not be great, but the fact that the person made it especially for the group of friends who are there makes it all that much better.

Incredible food comes from people doing everything technically correct, while putting there all into creating it. I can see it in a good cook, they create every dish like they are only cooking for that person. Everything is where its supposed to be, and they go out in spirit with that dish.

Its hard to find a whole restaurant of cooks doing this, but I'll keep trying to find it, and so should you. Good Luck!

Wow- After Hillel's series about the soul of a great restaurant, this truly is a post about the soul of great food! I remember vividly my own discovery of the power of Nostalgia in food. In fact, I too wrote a post about it

http://phatduck.blogspot.com/2005/04/take-me-back.html

Nostalgia is an amazing emotional trigger. It can be the difference between great food, and unforgettable food that people will talk about years down the road. To be able to manipulate that kind of emotional reaction with food leaves an indellible mark on the diners memories. Besides, it's just plain fun!

Funny how much nostalgia plays into the equation. I like Coffee Crisp bars, which I grew up with, but my husband from Australia, gets excited when he sees a Cherry Ripe. Last time we were there, I tried one, and YEELCHH! They're awful. But being from his childhood, he loves them.

I am in complete agreement with you. I remember my Grandmothers cooking more than probably any other food I have eaten, and it's been years since I have had the pleasure of tasting any of her food. Her cooking was pretty basic meat and potato type dishes that probably wouldn't do much for me coming from most other cooks.

What a wonderful post. :) I have to admit - my parents were never great cooks, technically. But their food was great to me, because they created it with love. You're right - nostalgia has a huge role to play in how much we love what we eat!

Great food, good food. Where's the distinction?
When we listen to music, an amateur song will have a nice melody, maybe nice singing. But it wont have a lot going on - not a lot of backing, not a lot of dyanamic eq range, certainly no stereo effects to add depth.
To me great food is like this too - you have the "good taste", which any food can give, but you also have more subtle tastes across different parts of your palate.
Consider the difference between a good red wine and a really expensive red - the expensive on manages to "fill your mouth" with taste, without mashing flavours together.